Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [19]
But she wasn't on her own, of course. She had Doll, strolling along in silks at her side and laughing at the notion of any trade honester than her own. Under her tutelage Mary tasted rum from Barbados, French wine, lemons from Portugal, and a pineapple so sweet she thought her head would explode. 'That came from a glasshouse out Paddington way,' Doll told her, 'and do you know what it grew in?'
'What?'
'Our shit!' Doll howled with laughter. 'I swear to the Maker, they buy fresh London shit from the night-soil men and grow pineapples in it!'
With Doll came gin and merriment, a great randomness, a feeling that you never knew what the day might hold. Decisions edged out of Mary's reach; the future slid out of her grasp.
And there was another thing: her belly. Mary felt its contours every morning, and for all her bleak hopes, she had to admit it now: the swelling had never gone down. Somehow what was growing inside her had survived the soldiers, and the ditch, and even the dirty fever. It was a little bigger every week. At night she lay in her shift with her back to Doll. She crossed her arms and pressed down on the bump till she thought she might burst.
But a fishwife she got talking to about the oyster trade gave Mary's borrowed bodice a knowing look and remarked, 'You could always put yourself out to nurse, if your own didn't live.'
Mary was too shocked to answer. She walked away without a word.
She knew she had to tell Doll. It was just a matter of finding the moment, and the right words. But when did Doll ever need telling about anything?
'High time you rid yourself of that,' she remarked to Mary one morning with no preamble, as she staggered in the door of their dark garret.
Mary stared up from the straw mattress, unblinking. Her hands were joined across her stomach. 'You mean—'
'Lud, didn't they teach you nothing at that school?'
Mary stared down at her belly.
Doll let herself down on the mattress with a vast sigh. She smelt like a fire in a gin-shop. 'Now don't turn spleenish,' she yawned. 'I'm only saying what's sense, devil take me if I'm not. You can't tell me you want to bear it?'
All Mary knew about childbearing was gleaned from her brother's birth, when her mother had kept her shut up in the second room. All she remembered was a terrible panting, and stained sheets hung over the dresser to dry afterwards. And William Digot, blind drunk, roaring, 'A boy! A boy! We're a proper family now!'
Any case,' added Doll, 'it'll be born clapped. Had you thought of that?'
Mary's eyes were wet with panic, but she blinked until she could see. She hadn't known that. She let herself think of a baby, pushing out from between her legs, diseased before its first breath. Nausea rose up in her throat. 'Tell me, then,' she said rapidly. 'Tell me how to stop it.'
Doll let out a massive yawn and pushed herself up on one elbow. 'Well, looks like it's too late for coffee berries, though I've known a brew of tamarisk to work at a pinch ... Sit up,' she ordered.
Mary sat straight; her belly pushed out in front of her, now she wasn't trying to hold it in. They both stared at it.
'When did you get it? July, August?'
'May.'
Doll counted on her fingers and tutted. 'Six months! You're such a skinny thing, I didn't reckon you were so far gone. Well, you'll have to pay a call on Ma Slattery, that's the only thing for it. But she charges a full crown.'
'I don't have it,' said Mary after a few seconds, wetting her lips with her tongue. 'I don't have a—'
'I know that,' said Doll. 'But don't keep letting on you can't think of a single way to get it.'
Mary turned her head away.
'Listen,' said Doll in a hard voice, 'if you intend to keep laying about here forever—'
'I don't,' interrupted Mary. And I'm vastly grateful—'
'Gratitude's not needed. And besides, it won't pay the rent.'
The silence lengthened.
'You got anything else?' asked Doll softly. 'Anything to pawn? Any friends you haven't mentioned?'
'No.'
'Then use what you've got, I say. Sell it while you're young and the market's